Tanni for Danceof Chaos
I have been doing bullet journaling from 2016. It helped me stay organised and handle the huge amount of information I had to handle daily. As my blog name suggested, I am always finding rhythm in the chaos of life and journaling and tracking helps me do it. I have detailed about how I try to find my work life balance and my personal tips and tricks in the productivity series I wrote in my blog.
All that was before baby K entered our life. A baby changes everything. You know it, I know it, but you realise the full impact of it only when it happens to you. No matter how much you read and prepare yourself, you have to live it to feel it.
Old Planning Method
All of this has made a significant change in my journaling. I used functional layouts before but still I used to create the layouts before hand, decorate them a bit. There were items like mood tracker, sleep tracker and I followed some inspirations to have decorative layouts. I am not blessed with painting/ illustration power and my solution were stickers. I used to sit and ponder and choose perfectly matching stickers, and a lot of coffee stickers. This for example was my layout in March 2021.
All of that have been stripped away and a bare boned functional layout remains. Now I plan them at a daily to do tandem. The night before I write down the stuff I want to do the next day. During the day, I keep adding to the tasks or postpone it to next day. Instead of a rolling list, I just write down whatever I could not do today for tomorrow. Sometimes I skip a day as other things take priority. So I have stopped creating layouts ahead. Just bared boned layout with minimal decoration and adding the date the night before. I need max 10 minute for that, which is a nice break for me.
New Planning Method
The need of planning has become much more as the influx of information is much more now, plus the spontaneity of it. Thankfully I am taking a relatively long maternity leave from work and only have baby and blog to think about. My social life has also expanded suddenly : playdates for baby, appointments for baby, then our necessary appointments, then events, sports. Too many events to keep an overview of. So I have switched to the Alastair Method of future log which gives a very good overview right now. I hang it on kitchen so that everyone knows it. Aside from that, Microsoft ToDo still remains my favourite office app, even for home organisation. Between ToDo, Calender , my pen and paper planning, I am beginning to create a new pattern again.
I still maintain my daily journal, even if it is just two lines per day. It is important to get the feelings out.
Small Wins of the day/ gratitude Journal
What I have started logging is a Small Win of the day section. I try to encourage myself and remind myself of the small win of the day. Like when I can read few pages of a new book even when it was a very long day and baby was very fussy. I will note it down the next day if necessary. It is important to remind me how small wins count. Last Saturday, we needed to run to grocery to grab something we needed. I found an unexpected packet of carrot noodles and I felt so happy. Counting my blessings have led me to appreciate everything in life. And who would not appreciate all the blessings they have, specially health in 2022?
I have managed to write this blog article today; second one since baby is here. I promised myself to write twice a month and kept fifty percent of it. Today, it took me three hours to type seven hundred words, my baby is sitting in my lap as I am typing it now. But I managed to write a post, publish it ( as my husband kept her busy) and even post it on social media. It is my big WIN of the day, maybe for the week or maybe for the coming four weeks.